Publications

October 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Lovepop

By: Robert F. White, Ramana Nanda and Olivia Hull

As they prepare to graduate from Harvard Business School, the co-founders of greeting card company startup Lovepop need capital to cover the company’s operating costs and must choose between two seed financing offers. One offer is from an angel group and the other from... View Details

Keywords: Accelerator; Incubator; Seed Financing; Convertible Debt; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Financing and Loans; Borrowing and Debt; Growth and Development Strategy; Valuation; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Boston; Massachusetts; United States

April 2006
Case

Finance Leadership in Novartis Consumer Health Businesses

By: Boris Groysberg and Ingrid Vargas

Describes and contrasts the roles and challenges of three high-performing finance heads at Novartis Consumer Health businesses in Australia, Japan, and Venezuela. All three faced tremendous pressures in terms of managing time and limited resources, but the particular... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Financial Management; Multinational Firms and Management; Leadership Style; Health Industry; Japan; Australia; Venezuela

30 May 2007
Research & Ideas

Health Care Under a Research Microscope

learning a new surgical technique. Recent books by faculty have also challenged how we understand the health care system. Within the last three years Herzlinger authored Consumer-Driven View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Health; Health

October 14, 2019
Article

How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Health Care Delivery

By: Samantha F. Sanders, Mats Terwiesch, William J. Gordon and Ariel Dora Stern

The development of intelligent machines holds great promise for making health care delivery more accurate, efficient, and accessible, but challenges remain for incorporating AI into clinical and administrative settings. View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Technological Innovation; AI and Machine Learning

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April 2003 (Revised October 2004)
Case

Novartis: The Challenge of Success (A)

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Stacy McManus

Preliminary results from Phase 1 clinical trials of a newly developed compound, STI571, showed that 31 out of 31 patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) had their blood counts return to normal. In the world of oncology, this was unheard of. This was the... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Health Testing and Trials; Innovation and Invention; Markets; Distribution; Product Development; Production; Problems and Challenges; Research; Research and Development; Complexity; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

June 1994 (Revised February 1999)
Case

Marcia Radosevich and Health Payment Review--1989 (A)

Martha Radosevich, president of Health Payment Review, a small software start-up, confronts a serious cash-flow problem: Health Payment Review has built a PC-based prototype but has run out of funds to build a commercially acceptable mainframe product. As a stop-gap... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Cash Flow; Entrepreneurship; Applications and Software; Sales; Information Technology Industry

13 Dec 2006
Research & Ideas

Improving Public Health for the Poor

who originally challenged Chu to apply his experience to these issues, stepped up as an angel investor for Project Antares, named after the brightest star in the night sky. One of the challenges of the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

08 Apr 2009
Research & Ideas

Clayton Christensen on Disrupting Health Care

reactor" in accelerating the rise in health-care costs. Why is this system such a problem? A: By some estimates, 50 percent of all health care is driven by physician and hospital supply, not by patients'... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; Health

May 2024
Article

The Health Risks of Generative AI-Based Wellness Apps

By: Julian De Freitas and G. Cohen

Artifcial intelligence (AI)-enabled chatbots are increasingly being used to help people manage their mental health. Chatbots for mental health and particularly ‘wellness’ applications currently exist in a regulatory ‘gray area’. Indeed, most generative AI-powered... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Well-being; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Applications and Software

2021
Case

Leading Through Challenging Times: Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms

By: Michael Norris, Rawi Abdelal and Kimberlyn Leary

Keisha Lance Bottoms took office as Mayor of Atlanta in 2018 with a progressive agenda and hopes to “keep Atlanta moving forward, leaving no one behind.” She was an Atlanta native, had previously served as a local judge and city councilor, and came into office with... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; City; Problems and Challenges; Health Pandemics; Social Issues; Economy; Atlanta; United States

Jun 2020
Panel Discussion

COVID-19 in Africa: Reflections, Challenges and Next Steps

By: John D. Macomber, Mattias Fibiger, Hakeem Belo-Osagie, Shikhar Ghosh, Anywhere Sikochi, Laura Alfaro, Euvin Naidoo and Suraj Srinivasan

In June 2020, the Africa Research Center hosted a four-part webinar series titled COVID-19: Reflections, Challenges and Next Steps. The series brought together alumni and friends from across Africa and provided the opportunity to get to know HBS professors who are... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Macroeconomics; Leadership; Strategy; Africa

Article

Health Care Providers Need a Value Management Office

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Catherine H. MacLean, Alexander Dresner, Derek A. Haas and Thomas W. Feeley

Many health care organizations are striving to implement a value agenda that delivers better patient outcomes at lower cost, medical condition by medical condition. To accelerate the dissemination and adoption of the value agenda, across many more medical conditions,... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Value; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

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Research Summary

Innovation and Performance Improvement in Health Care

By: Robert S. Huckman

This stream of Professor Huckman's work examines how organizations delivering health care can structure and manage their activities to improve operational performance. It addresses issues including the impact of various forms of familiarity on performance, the impact... View Details

September 2024 (Revised March 2025)
Case

Epic: The Future of Health Information Technology

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Brian L. Walker

How should the founder and leadership team of a health IT company with more than 45 years of market leadership prepare for the future, while navigating founder transitions and industry changes? Founded by Judy Faulkner in the late 1970s, Epic pioneered electronic... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Private Ownership; Customer Focus and Relationships; Information Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business Strategy; Competition; Health Industry; Health Industry; Health Industry

August 8, 2018
Article

Hospital-based ACOs Face Challenges in Tracking Performance Indicators

By: Christiana Beveridge, Sofia Warner, Greg Leya and Thomas W. Feeley

Given that accountable care organizations (ACOs) have not achieved the degree of cost reductions and quality improvements initially hoped for, we sought to better understand the underlying reasons for their limited success. Our analysis of American Hospital Association... View Details

Keywords: ACOs; Health Care and Treatment; Cost Management; Performance; Measurement and Metrics

2017
Casebook

Public Health Preparedness: Case Studies in Policy and Management

By: Arnold M. Howitt, Dutch Leonard and David W. Giles

This book provides detailed accounts of a range of public health emergencies. Topics range from natural disasters, to infectious diseases, to pandemics, and more. With chapters on Superstorm Sandy, H1N1, the Ebola virus, and bioterrorism, these cases cover major areas... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Natural Disasters; Safety; Public Sector; Policy; Management

16 Jul 2008
Op-Ed

What Should Employers Do about Health Care?

and health plan administrators measure and improve their health results for plan members. Fourth, employers must accelerate change in reimbursement to link financial success to... View Details

Keywords: by Michael E. Porter, Elizabeth O. Teisberg & Scott Wallace; Health

04 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Is Health Care Making You Better—or Dead?

with the health care system went in the book. A: Oh, I remember the birth of my daughter, who's now a doctor. I had a very long labor with her. My obstetrician, a lovely man, was giving me a hormone called pitocin to View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Health

July 2022
Article

Mental Health During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review and Recommendations for Moving Forward

By: Lara Aknin, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Elizabeth Dunn, Daisy Fancourt, Elkhonon Goldberg, John Helliwell, Sarah P. Jones, Elie Karam, Richard Layard, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Andrew Rzepa, Shekhar Saxena, Emily Thornton, Tyler VanderWeele, Ashley V. Whillans, Jamil Zaki, Ozge Karadag Caman and Yanis Ben Amour

COVID-19 has infected millions of people and upended the lives of most humans on the planet. Researchers from across the psychological sciences have sought to document and investigate the impact of COVID-19 in myriad ways, causing an explosion of research that is broad... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Mental Health; Psychological Distress; Subjective Well-being; Lonelines; Social Connection; Self-harm; Suicide; Health Pandemics; Well-being

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